So why not an iPhone? I'm not trolling, I try to understand why so many IT guys choose Android when it's obvious that Google sucks as much data as they can out of the platform.
An iPhone would not be a step up but a jump down.
I have a Galaxy Tab S5e on the way that runs Android + Samsung DeX Linux. I'm hoping to use the Linux aspect heavily, so less of my info flows to Google. But I'll need to dig into it a bit to understand how they keep the data separate (if they do).
For software support I can generally recommend the Pocophone F1 by Xiaomi. The process of unlocking the bootloader is an insult, but after killing of Xiaomi software the user experience is quite good, with pretty good hardware for quite little money.
As soon as you have a compatible OS ("ROM") running, you will generally not have to worry about hardware, but making one is a considerable amount of work, so if you're intending to install a custom OS you should better choose a phone with good developer support.
I have been thinking about starting a database of good phone choices for modding/free software, but am not sure how much interest there is.
Cellular modems with open firmware are prohibited in 140 countries, including US and Europe.
For US: https://apps.fcc.gov/oetcf/kdb/forms/FTSSearchResultPage.cfm...
"Jailbreaking" on Android is as easy as flipping a toggle in the security settings. It allows for easy sideloading in general, and the use of alternative app sources in particular. IOS's developer sideloading capabilities have so many restrictions and limitations that it barely counts as sideloading.
Apple HATES the GPLv3, and specifically designed their app store agreement to forbid GPLv3 software. Good luck finding anything GPLv3 that's not dual-licensed on their app store. This effectively bans any GPLv3 software that's not exclusively developed by a single company (or is a community project that mandates copyright reassignment) from the app store. (Fun fact: Apple's hatred of the GPLv3 is the same reason that they ship MacOS with a 12-year-old version of Bash, v3.2, the last version under GPLv2.) I won't support a company so hostile to the very concept of free software. Google is the embodiment of the phrase "privacy nightmare", but even they obey the spirit of the GPL and other free software/open source licenses in their projects.
No iPhone has ever had a microSD slot. I'm not going to spend a multi-hundred-dollar premium for the equivalent storage space of a $20 microSD card.
I prefer Linux at home. Historically iPhones have required iTunes for basic functionality such as copying music to the phone, and therefore required Windows or MacOS. It's not as painful nowadays to use an iPhone without iTunes day-to-day, but it's still nowhere near as simple as Android, and certain operations still require iTunes.
Mobile Firefox on Android supports regular desktop Firefox extensions. I wouldn't be able to install Ublock Origin, Decentraleyes, UMatrix, or any other extension on Firefox on IOS, because Apple mandates that all third-party browsers on IOS can only be wrappers around mobile Safari. I can easily install standard extensions on Firefox for Android, because it's really Firefox under the hood.
I greatly hope for the success of the Librem 5. I would drop Android in a heartbeat for a genuinely Google-free phone with all the traditional openness (sideloading, adding cheap storage, easy wired file transfers without Windows/OSX, etc) of Android. GApps-less LineageOS is better than standard Google-laden Android but it's still not ideal. All I'm waiting for before ordering a Librem 5 is final confirmation that the supported frequencies match my carrier.
I find Apple's stance slightly odd since I don't think the GPLv3 apps would infect Apple, but then I also haven't taken the trouble to thoroughly understand GPLv3. I started to research it some years ago and my quick conclusion was "avoid".
I don't really have too much complaint about GPLv2. It does impose some limits but I feel like I understand them and can work with them.
Definitely with you on the $20 microSD card. The markup for storage is absurd.
Update: want to add this question. Anyone know why Apple would bar a GPLv3 app from the app store (bash is unfortunate but I think I understand that one)?
I think it's simply a company-wide policy made at the recommendation of overly-cautious legal counsel.
On the matter of GPLv3, I think this is going to be an "agree to disagree" type of thing. I actually quite like the changes over v2. But then I'm not a professional developer. I'm just a bookkeeper who dabbles in coding for fun and for a bit of ad-hoc automation on the job. My perspective is certainly quite different from someone who makes a living programming.
Working as a contractor writing closed source software and allowing my clients to mostly own what I create allows me to work around 30 hours a week and spend time doing volunteer work. If there was a path to do that with Free Software I might go for it.
It's ironic because apple is actually violating gplv2 with bash (it should distribute rootless.h)
i.e. Android is completely open; if Google were to try to put something nefarious in it, anyone who'd checked out the Android source would be able to see that nefarious thing and remove it; if Google kept putting it back in, nerds would be able to fork Android to take it away from Google.
This has become much less true over the years than it used to be, of course, as much of what makes Android Android has migrated out of the core OS into less open intermediate layers like apps and services. This transition helps Google push updates out to users more quickly, since cell network operators proved to be pretty slow about pushing out updates to Android proper, but from Google's perspective it also has the side benefit of making "open Android" (e.g. AOSP) pretty incomplete unless you pair it with Google's proprietary services.
Relevant thread: https://twitter.com/CopperheadOS/status/772592323112869888
If you read the thread I linked, you'll see that Google doesn't really bother to ensure open source Android builds actually work at all: They post them but are only concerned with proprietary flavors being functional. Which means a lot of work has to be done to make open source Android even build in the first place.
Then, most apps are built on proprietary Google APIs, not open source Android APIs. So you either have to use something like micro-g to let you use Google services without the proprietary on-device code, or create your own replacement APIs that just claim to be Google, but aren't, which Amazon does and Microsoft experimented with when they made Android apps installable on some test builds of Windows Mobile. Or you have to substantially rewrite the apps not to use proprietary Google APIs.
So you have to do a lot to make open source Android anything actually work and do what people expect it to.
Ah, the favorite "a million eyes fallacy".
The truth is: there are very few (if any) people capable to do a full audit on the Android source code to see if something nefarious is happening. The source code for Android is over 20 GB. Good luck that "anyone" who can check it out an be able to see ... well ... anything.
When significant flaws were discovered in OpenSSL, it turned out there were only a handful people in the world who could potentially do a full analysis of the code base. And the resulting audit ended up costing millions, took several years and resulted in the re-implementation/forking of the code base.
I know that OpenSSL isn’t a part of Android, but it shows the difficulty of auditing a large complex project.
Believing that anyone can checkout Android code and easily discover if Google (or anyone) has done something nefarious is a delusion of the highest order. The code base would need to be continuously audited by a team of experts in various domains.
Do iPhones even collect less data? You'll still probably use Google, Facebook, and other data-collecting services on their platform. Not to mention the tracking carriers themselves do.
Even most Linux users aren't that concerned with privacy, at the end of the day most still use Chrome and Google services. It's more about choice, freedom and control over your device.
I think price is a pretty freaking good justification. I don't need to pay a 500 dollar mark-up to move out of "mid-range" when it does EVERYTHING I need my phone to do just fine.
200 euros less than a 3 year old phone, and while still too expensive for some developing countries, it feels being less wastefull of our society resources.
It is still one year younger, and for the remaining of your statement it doesn't justify paying the extra 200 euros, not everyone swims in money you know?
When the phone finally dies or gets stolen, those saved 200 euros are more than enough to get a new one.
IMO there are no good choices in this regard. Either get an expensive Apple device (And get locked into their bullshit), get an Android powered device and have your data harvested by google and the oem, or have nothing. There are no low-end offerings that even attempt to address privacy.